Category: Blogging

Almost every author will experience pirated copies of their books at least once in their lifetime. Should I feel honored or perturbed to discover that The Dubious Heir has found its way onto a website that is guilty of copyright infringement for not only my book but many other authors’ works can be found on this site as well?

I try to google my books from time to time, just to see how they are appearing in the search engine. Boy, was I surprised to discover that the entire book was uploaded on a website for all to view for free.

Not too long ago, I did offer a free promotion through Draft 2 Digital. However, that free eBook is to be regulated by the vendors that D2D distribute to like Barnes & Noble, Apple, Kobo, and Amazon.

Pirated copies not only steal from the author but also take from those vendors. No wonder Barnes and Noble’s sales are down, even for the free titles.

I guess that the site hosting the free pirated books is a host for viruses as well.

How do you go about a DMCA takedown notice?

First one needs to discover the name of the host for the website. Once you know who the host is then you can go future with notifying the host and then having the host inform the server.

Sometimes this does not work right away and may require several complaints against the website.

I found that the website of concern is being hosted by Cloudflare.com.

I then have filed a complaint with them about the website and notified them about copyright infringement. Amazon KDP would have an issue with any eBook found on a site such as this and would penalize the author if their works were found published for the public viewing when seeking to take part in the KDP program.

My next step is to wait and see if the website is taken down.

In the meantime, you might want to check the site and see if any of your works are being infringed upon.

I’m still around and kicking. It has been a hectic last couple of years with the college courses I’ve been taking. I think the worst is just about over as I am beginning to see a lull in the middle of the term which may give me that time I need to start writing once again. Next month I will be a senior with four more terms until I graduate with my Bachelor’s Degree. Then I will have one year left as I seek my Masters of Science in Accounting.

I think my writing style may have changed for the better. We will see as time progresses and those WIPs move closer to completion. Then there will be the edits and hopefully, I will have a few Beta Readers by then to tell me what they like and dislike about the stories so I can maybe tweak the storyline a little bit.

In fact, today I located my files for Insane Desires and the Lady from Hayata. It took me almost an hour to track down the correct file for Insane Desires. I knew I had quite a bit done, more than all the other files were saying.

I think I will be moving away from using Scrivener. I have found the software distracting, and I can get more done when I am using Word.

Scrivener is a pretty cool program, but it has too many bells and whistles to play with, and I always am more productive with Word.

The Writopedia word counter meters are not working at this time. Both books are right around 33% done.

NaNoWriMo is right around the corner. I may decide to sit this one out and focus on finishing at least one of the WIPs this year.